The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.

Reverend Simon Jones [Regarding Father Augustus Heinzerling]: Not so much like a proper Jesuit, perhaps, but he could certainly fake being a decent parochial priest on a good day. With a following wind.

The expression on Melissa's face today was the same one Mike remembered from years before. The aloof, questioning eyebrow-lift with which she greeted a student who approached her with a problem after class. A facial gesture which, somehow, managed to combine three different propositions:

One. You wish?

Two. Yes, I will be glad to help you.

Three. You will almost certainly wish I hadn't.

"Do you know what the epitaph of a successful civil servant is?" "He never did anything that got his name in the paper."

The bottom floor was painted red, with the shutters trimmed with red and pink zigzag stripes; the middle floor was painted pink, with the shutters ditto; the top floor was a positive explosion of gables and Fachwerk beams painted red, with the stucco in between them painted pink. There was a lost commercial opportunity for Grantville right in front of him. Whoever built this place would have paid a fortune for pink plastic lawn flamingos.

Mike Stearns was rather enjoying the reports coming out of the diplomatic pouches, which so clearly demonstrated that the rest of the world did not understand that Veronica Dreeson was a walking embodiment of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

One could not smite the papal nuncio's footman. No matter how sincerely one might wish to smite him. One could think it, though. Smite, smote, smitten. So there. Arrrgh.

The admiral would never be rude enough to yell at Tanya. He might very well, however, yell at Ed — and Simpson was fully capable of yelling in Morse code if he was sufficiently provoked.